Caio... hugs her.

"You think you busted the gates?" says Aadhya. "No way - I saw the shimmer reshape, no way -" But she doesn't have another idea.

"What else would it be," sobs Bella into Caio's shoulder.

"They have lots of - failsafes, if they could be nibbled away by agglos or by mals that adapted to suck mana out of artifice they'd be long gone. They're probably fine even if they were tripped up for a second. We're in some obscure place, we'll figure out a comm spell between us, we'll get picked up and helicoptered away with bags over our heads so we don't tell anyone where it is."

Bella sags.

"Hope so," she sighs. "...right. I'll start thinking on the comm spell." They're not commonly picked up in the Scholomance. What are you going to do, comm spell someone who lives down a flights of stairs and believes every interruption to their studies is life-threatening? And Bella's the creative writer.

The place they're in is very obviously not New Orleans or New Jersey or Brazil! 

It's a forest. It's very obviously winter; the exposed ground is deeply carpeted in snow, the tree branches - some evergreen, some denuded of all leaves - encrusted in ice or carrying their own muffling snowy blankets.

The forest has an intensely creepy feel. The trees are twisted into vaguely unnatural-seeming shapes and it would be entirely appropriate if a horror movie soundtrack were playing in the background. It isn't, though; it's very, very quiet. The ambiance is somehow one of a moonless night, even though it seems to be earlyish in the morning, judging by the few angled rays of pale sunlight making their way through the trees. 

The forest also looks like it endured a bad storm or something, recently. A number of smaller saplings were knocked over or uprooted; the big tree visible off to one side has several dead branches, half splintered off and dangling. 

That other tree over there definitely has teeth. They're arranged in circular mouth-shapes around the buds that will presumably grow into new leaves come spring. 

Bella's guess is that this is a weird island in the southern hemisphere that has weird island plants. It'd be a good choice, a lot of mals don't like to cross water and would have a hard time getting into the school through the gate if it connected to such an island.

The kids tromp through the snow looking for a clearing suitable for an igloo or a lean-to. Bella's power sharer doesn't connect to anything, so she, still full from drawing off it, tops off the other two a little. (She didn't have a spare to offer; her allies have been promised interviews but she didn't have a guarantee to offer either.)

Aadhya finds a good place to plant her pike in the ground so none of them poke themselves on the poisoned teeth, and starts dragging broken branches over to prop up on it and other less broken branches, so they have a reasonably enclosed space to warm up.

Caio jogs in place. For mana. And warmth.

And, for a while, ten or fifteen minutes maybe, nothing happens. The forest continues to be uncannily quiet. 

...and then something in the distance is loudly crashing toward them.

SHIT. Aadhya wrecks the fort in progress by yanking the pike out of the ground and setting it against the charging whatever it is.

Bella casts a shield - it's cheaper than the antimagic torus -

Caio pulls his boomerang; he made it in shop and it was useful enough to pack, but wouldn't have been much good in the graduation hall where there were so many mals. If there's only one thing, though, it'll help. He waits till it comes into view to throw.

The creature seems to be making rather a lot of crashing sounds, compared to how fast the crashing sounds are actually approaching them. When it comes into view, it's clearer why; the monster, which looks sort of like a bear that was stretched like putty until there was room for an entire additional pair of legs in the middle, is visibly injured, favoring one of its six paws and with the hair half burned off its haunch. Bloody foam drips from its jaw, which is also uncannily elongated and full of disturbingly barbed-looking teeth. 

Okay so it just came off worse in a fight and - didn't get whoever it was trying to eat, maybe, so it's hungry, but - Caio throws the boomerang.

Aadhya plants her pike and casts to keep her feet rooted.

The boomerang knocks the creature sideways a bit, but doesn't kill or incapacitate it; it seems very tough, probably magically so. 

It pauses, though, and turns its head from side to side, blinking and looking very confused. (Its pupils are slitted, like a snake's.) 

The boomerang comes back even if you're incompetent at throwing! Caio catches it and throws it again.

The creature shakes its head a couple of times, and then - sprints past them, vanishing between more trees. 

...There are still sounds coming from the forest where it emerged from. Less crashing, more...rustling? Hissing, but not like an animal, like wind through leaves? 

Aadhya unsets the pike and spins around to be ready for that bear-mal or any of its friends coming from the rustling direction.

How carefully are they watching? 

(If they're watching very carefully, they might notice that, where there were previously two trees, both leaning to the left, with strange gnarled-yet-fluffy bark sort of resembling braided candyfloss, there are now three such trees. The third one didn't so much move or appear suddenly as fade sneakily into view.) 

They are fresh out of the Scholomance. They know a mimic when they see one. Caio makes a hand signal and they all three bolt, perpendicular to the direction the mal came from.

It will try to fling some acid-tipped vine-branches after them! (....It's not very fast. Usually it can sneak up on its prey much more effectively than that.)

Well, that's startling enough that Bella can cast her cheap set-startling-thing-on-fire spell.

The tree-mimic-thing is apparently very flammable! And does not like this at all! It's flailing wildly and sending burning seedpods flying everywhere, some of which explode in midair, but none of this is particularly aimed at the fleeing students.